Connected living | PRODUCT FEATURE
All of Miele’s smart appliances can be networked conveniently and securely via the Miele@home app
Top 10 desired smart home additions according to smart home week 2019 survey
1 A toilet which cleans itself 2 A carpet which cleans itself 3 An oven which can cook separate items of food at different temperatures at the same time
4 Control heated flooring throughout the house
5 An oven which turns itself off when sensing dinner is cooked
6 An oven which turns itself off when your food is cooked
7 A wardrobe which cleans, irons, folds your clothes and puts everything away colour co-ordinated
8 Boil the kettle by voice request
9 Bins which empty themselves
10 Vacuum cleaner which runs when the house is empty
Rotpunkt’s new smart-ready lighting solutions let users control their kitchen lights remotely using a digital assistant
support voice activation devices and apps such as Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, and Google Assistant, enabling the user to control temperature settings using their voice.
These smart devices can save the consumer up to around 10% on heating bills and for a retailer they could make a relatively easy add-on sale as many can be fitted easily, by an installer or the consumer themselves. And, while the margin on smart thermostats might not be great, energy-saving and sustainability is increasingly important to consumers, so demonstrating that you’re sustainably minded could help attract additional customers.
Smart lighting is usually a primary consideration when homeowners are thinking about smart home integration,
October 2022 ·
and this normally consists of lighting schemes of strategically placed low-cost, long-lasting, energy-efficient LEDs. As well as spotlights, this can be integrated into cabinetry and suppliers such as Philips Hue offer lighting solutions which can change colour to suit the ambience. And again, consumers can control their lighting by voice command using digital assistants. However, although lighting design is a common offering for many KBB retailers, smart lighting tends to be out of their remit. In fact, Morten Warren, founder and CEO of Zuma, a British tech start-up that says it is revolutionising our relationship with sound and light in the home, notes that for too long, smart devices have been focused on the main living areas.
Yet kitchens — widely known to be the hub of the home — and bathrooms have been left largely untapped. So much so that only 30% of kitchen projects and 21% of bathroom designs include some type of integrated smart products, despite designers reporting the desire is there.
Partly as a consequence of this, dedicated smart kitchen and bathroom products tend to stand slightly apart from the ‘integrated home’ in its traditional sense, and elements like lighting tend to be integrated into furniture by the manufacturers or provided by KBB-specific brands such as Sensio or Sycamore, and brands like Gira, which offer smart switches and intelligent system solutions. Voice assistant technology has been one of the most revolutionary
Smart lighting and audio by Zuma
smart technologies to emerge in recent years and uptake has been huge, with more than half (52%) of UK households now owning a voice assistant device. While initially this technology was seen as a bit of a novelty, it now can be found in everything from lighting and heating controls to appliances, such as the most recent launches from Neff. Because it’s now so ubiquitous and intuitive it could be the thing which helps to make the smart home more holistic and less fragmented. In terms of connected kitchen and bathroom products more specifically, smart functionality should make a genuine difference to the user experience and should never be offered just for its own sake. Voice-activation and control is
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